Photo by Jon Anderson
Chris Stewart, a sportscaster for the Crimson Tide Sports Network and vice president for the eds-American real estate consulting and development firm, speaks to the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce in the banquet room at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in Hoover, Alabama, on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023.
People accustomed to listening to Chris Stewart do broadcasting for the Crimson Tide Sports Network for 24 years may not all know where he lays his head at night, but the veteran sports talker told the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce on Thursday he is proud to call Hoover home.
Stewart, who for more than two decades has done play-by-play announcing for Alabama basketball and baseball and been a longtime member of the football broadcast team, said that except for about 1½ years, Hoover has been his home since he graduated from college in 1992.
Stewart, speaking to a crowd in the banquet room at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium, thanked the civic and business leaders for making Hoover a place where people want to be.
Even though the Hoover Met and surrounding complex have changed a lot over the years, Stewart said he’s still just as amazed and somewhat awestruck when he drives up to the stadium as he was when the Birmingham Barons played their first game there in 1988.
He said it’s always special and “quite frankly a little bit scary” when you get to speak in front of so many people you know, but he was thankful for the opportunity.
Hoover Council President John Lyda, who introduced Stewart, noted that he is a spokesman for several companies, including Mobley Clothier in Tuscaloosa, and noted it was evident because Stewart was dressed “casket ready” for this speech.
Stewart joked it’s probably a good idea for him to be dressed “casket ready” because he’s been through so much healthwise in the last five years.
Five years ago in April he went to bed one Sunday night and woke up 12 hours later with what turned out to be two blood clots on his brain. He had had a stroke during his sleep and had to have the clots surgically removed.
Stewart almost ran out of time before Dr. Jitendra Sharma got the blood clot removed. Stewart’s left eye was droopy after the surgery, forcing him to wear an eye patch. Doctors told him it probably would be two to three years before his sight would return correctly, but “God healed me” and allowed him to see within 11 months, he said.
Sixteen months after the surgery, he saw Sharma in a social setting, and Sharma told him he looked great. Stewart replied that he felt great, except a little tingling in in upper arm.
Sharma immediately recognized that as a heart problem and had Stewart come in for tests that revealed Stewart’s “widowmaker” artery was 95% blocked, Stewart said. Stewart had a successful bypass surgery but developed an infection that led to pneumonia, sepsis, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (commonly known as MRSA) and rhabdomyolysis, Stewart said.
“Every major organ began to shut down,” he said. “My wife called some of my closest friends and family and said, ‘You need to come tell him goodbye. He’s not going to make it,’” Stewart said. “I was in a coma for two weeks. The doctor would say that you were as sick as you could possibly be without actually dying.”
Stewart said he is very blessed, and his health problems only deepened his relationship with his three children, ages 12, 18 and 22.
He also shared with the audience the progression of his career, which started at the University of Montevallo, which he termed “the Harvard of Shelby County.”
He still remembers being in sports broadcasting class when the instructor was giving people jobs and he raised his hand to volunteer when the instructor said he needed two broadcasters. Another fellow volunteered to do color analysis, and Stewart offered to do the play-by-play announcing. “Nobody’s stopped me since 1988, so I guess I’ll keep going,” he said.
Photo by Jon Anderson
Chris Stewart, a sportscaster for the Crimson Tide Sports Network and vice president for the eds-American real estate consulting and development firm, greets people after speaking at the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon in the banquet room at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in Hoover, Alabama, on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023.
He also remembers doing the play-by-play announcing at the very first volleyball match he had ever seen and the various mistakes he made, he said. He talked about the upcoming halftime when there is no halftime in volleyball and mentioned at one point that “we’ll be back after this commercial message” only to quickly learn that they didn’t have any commercials.
Stewart went on to get a job as the radio announcer for Birmingham-Southern College sports, where he described the action for two National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics national championships won by the Panthers in basketball and baseball.
He then moved on to the University of Alabama and has been there ever since. This past football season, he had the opportunity to fill Eli Gold’s shoes as the play-by-play football announcer while Gold was sidelined for health reasons.
It was a bittersweet time, he said. “I was sick when my services were needed because Eli was not doing well healthwise,” he said. “I was beyond flattered that I was the one given the opportunity to do the games because I’ve been an Alabama fan my whole life.”
He remembers growing up watching and listening to Alabama games, hearing John Forney, Paul Kennedy and Eli Gold do the play-by-by announcing and has been blessed to get to know those men and work with Gold.
“I’m still amazed I get to do what I do, where I get to do it,” Stewart said. “To sit in the spot that those gentlemen sat is pretty amazing.”
